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Why Patrice Bergeron deserves (and won't win) the Hart Trophy

If you watched the telecast of Sunday’s game between the Bruins and Flyers, the seed has probably already been planted in your mind: Is Patrice Bergeron, who should win his second Selke Trophy this season, a legitimate candidate to win the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player?

Pierre McGuire mentioned Bergeron’s Hart credentials more often than he mentioned watching him play for the Acadie-Bathurst Titan back in the day, so you know he meant business.

Really, the idea of a two-way player who isn’t anywhere near the top of the league in points winning the Hart is an interesting discussion, as Bergeron is the best forward on what is -- according to the standings, at least -- the best team in the NHL.

That’s nothing to overlook, and the fact that he’s now putting up major offense -- with 27 goals thus far, he should hit 30 this season to complement his faceoff dominance and defensive prowess -- feeds the popular narrative that, yes, Bergeron is the “perfect player.”

As crazy as it sounds, perfect probably isn't enough unless you put up the most points, and if you want the quick answer as to whether Bergeron will win the Hart, it’s no. Bergeron won’t beat out Sidney Crosby, who is -- despite what we saw last June -- a nearly unstoppable offensive player. He’s such a dominant player offensive player and isn’t weak anywhere else. Given that, you can’t expect many voters to put a well-rounded guy like Bergeron over a spectacular player like Crosby, who leads the league with 97 points. That isn't an argument that Crosby (or Ryan Getzlaf, who is second in the NHL in points) deserves it more than Bergeron, but an argument that more people are going to give their first-place votes to a more offensively awesome player. Lightning goalie Ben Bishop also deserves major consideration, but Crosby figures to be the darling of voters.

(First, a quick note about voting: These awards are decided by the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association. If you’ve ever heard of the PHWA, you’re probably a member. All you need is $25 and some place where you say you write about hockey or “cover” a team, and bam, there it is. Your vote weighs just as much as mine, some punk who’s been covering the NHL for four years and has helped decide these awards since his second year. My vote, by the way, is worth just as much as Steve Conroy’s or Fluto Shinzawa’s.

The point there is that voting for the Hart, Norris, Selke, Calder, Lady Byng, etc., is a little harder and a little more expensive than voting for NESN’s Seventh Player Award. Just like that voting can come out silly, so, too, can these awards. Multiple people gave Tyler Seguin Selke votes the last two years, something Seguin himself openly laughed at each time.)

At the time that Sunday’s game ended, Bergeron was 39th in the NHL in points and third on his own team in points with 56, which is 41 less than Crosby. He was tied for 21st with 27 goals, a number that he could still improve, but neither his points nor his goals put him anywhere close to on par with past Hart winners.

History has shown that in order to win the Hart as a forward (a goalie has won it seven times, while a defenseman has won 13 times -- though it’s gone to a blueliner just once in the last 40 seasons), you have to be top-three in the league in either goals or points. Agree with it or not, it’s tried and true.

Here are the last 20 Hart winners and where they ranked in both points and goals:

2013* -- Alexander Ovechkin: third in points (56), first in goals (32)

Note that all 16 of the forwards on that list finished in the top three in either points or goals. All 16 of the forwards finished in the top three in points, with 13 of those players finishing first in either points or goals.

Get the point? Hoowow!

Now, thanks to the advances in statistics over the years, hockey analysis has gotten smarter. It’s easier to see through certain stats, and as such, Ovechkin, who leads the league in goals by a mile, does not figure to be a serious Hart candidate.

Still, it will be awfully tough for a player who isn’t in the top 15 in either points or goals (a generous estimation, as Bergeron’s scoring pace will likely place him within the top 20 in goals this season) would crash the points party that is the Hart club.

Everything else speaks for itself. He’s the best faceoff man in the league and is set to lead the NHL in faceoff wins again. Furthermore, Claude Julien said recently that he has never seen Bergeron cut a corner for the sake of scoring a goal.

“He’s not that type of player and I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that’s watched him play that he values every part of his game,” Julien said. “Whether it’s faceoff percentage, whether it’s plus/minus, whether he’s responsible for a goal against -- he takes those things very seriously and he’s hard on himself when it comes to that. I think he’s proud of what he is.”

Bergeron’s going to get votes. He’ll get votes from the Boston writers (at least here; writers have five votes and he’ll get one of mine) and he’ll get votes from Montreal writers (another column for another time -- man alive, do Montreal writers love Patrice Bergeron).

He’ll get votes elsewhere and maybe even a good number of first-place votes from progressive-thinking hockey writers. Unfortunately, that probably won’t be enough. Bergeron is as special a player as there is, but the shiniest awards -- fairly or unfairly -- still go to the shiniest players.

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